Dr. Paul Israel

So the telegraph was still a relatively new technology at this time.

The first line was established in the mid-1840s, and the telegraph slowly spread through to the Midwest by the time Edison was a young boy.

The telegraph was something that was also crucial for the trains.

Often, this is what was alerting stations ahead that there was a train coming and a way to prevent trains from running into each other if there was a single track.

And along the way were telegraph operators.

Edison would visit their offices and talk to them about telegraphy.

And then he got his first job as a telegraph operator in the Port Huron office, which was in a jewelry and clock repair shop.

And then shortly thereafter, he got a job as a railway telegrapher on the Port Huron Railway.

And over the next four or so years, he literally was an itinerant telegrapher moving from place to place in the Midwest.

And he became very skilled as a press wire operator.

The Associated Press began as a telegraph wire service.

And operators like Edison would take the stories down overnight and then deliver them to the newspaper office the next day.

And as well, during these years, he experimented with the technology itself.

Right.

So probably his first invention was a little practice telegraph where he could, as the signal came in, he could slow down the message so he could practice his receiving skills.

And this particular design, he would later adapt to

to his experiments on what was known as automatic telegraphy, which is a way of recording at very high speed, and then the recording could be played back at a slower speed.

One of the main things he experimented on is what were known as repeaters.

So the United States is a very big country,

And battery power allowed you to send a signal about 250 miles.